GenderMachine

Pattie Belle Hastings

I call this current line of research, GenderMachine - an umbrella title for a body of work that examines many facets of the relationship between gender and technology. As I mentioned earlier, I began noticing certain things in my laboratory as compared to similar laboratories – for instance the existence of hair on toys, the particular color of toys. In an effort to look more deeply into the subject I acquired a digital microscope for the laboratory and began examining these objects at macro levels. Surely there would be some clues as to why certain genders were more likely to be drawn to brightly colored plastic ponies with hairy manes and tails. Could it be that something at the molecular level of these objects communicated with the study subject? I have not yet come up with definitive answers, as this research is ongoing. Part of the daily operation in my domestic laboratory is the process of documenting the processes. Microscopy, slide creation, binding, research are all documented using webcams and time lapse video to create movies from which still frames are grabbed and then used again in the print work.

“Pattie Belle Hastings’s work, for example, records, in tongue-in-cheek fashion, the impact of such
domestic detritus as dryer lint and hair from My Little Pony toys on something the artist calls ‘gender
performance.’ In the show’s video installation, and in a series of deadpan ‘laboratory manuals,’ a
white-coated scientist investigates the artist’s ‘relationship to machine technologies.’ Alluding to her
own home life as a kind of ‘domestic laboratory,’ Hastings makes books and performance art that
document the minutiae of motherhood and housekeeping.”
Michael O'Sullivan, “Book as Art: Read Closely”, Washington Post, Friday, November 17, 2006